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Halloween Trip 2016!!!!!!

2K views 14 replies 10 participants last post by  namfbroh 
#1 ·
I feel like taking a break this year from hosting Halloween party and taking a Halloween Trip! I would love to visit somewhere that both has a huge town party and some excellent haunts or displays. Please suggest some awesome places to visit on Halloween!!!
 
#4 ·
PUNKPUMKIN.. just tonight a busload of haunters rode six hours from St. Louis to Mount Carroll, illinois to see our Ravens Grin Inn, and they all really were extremely complimentary concerning what they found here that i have built.
We are OPEN almost every night of the year, plus Sat. and Sun. afternoons.
(Our 29th Year!) What haunt has ever been open so many nights and days beside this one, none I tend to think.
just saying.. here we are!
 
#7 ·
I live in Florida and so I have done Halloween horror nights before. I kind of want to go somewhere where we can have cool haunts, maybe a town party/parade and costume parties. New orleans or salem are at the top of our lists now.
 
#11 ·
We took 2015 off and we visited Salem on Halloween. I will say this: it is absolutely an EXPERIENCE. The amount of people in the streets on Halloween is in the thousands. There were people throwing candy from buildings, a beer garden, the shops along Essex street were open and later on throughout the night there was a DJ set up that played really funky mashups with a Halloween twist. The real fun is just walking around and enjoying the atmosphere. If you want to sightsee, you need to do that before Halloween. So this past year, we went up Thursday -Sunday. Thursday we went around and visited Hocus Pocus locations, Friday we did some sightseeing and then that evening went to the Hawthorne Hotel's annual Halloween party and then Saturday we went out and enjoyed Halloween.

NOW, I will also say this--PARKING IS ATROCIOUS. There will be nowhere to park, so just plan that now. There are a handful of parking garages in downtown Salem and they WILL all be full. At least the day of and before Halloween. Parking garages go up to $20 on Halloween and there will be parking areas that the locals set up for people to park...also for $20....and they also will be full. NOW, we found a parking garage RIGHT on the very outskirt of downtown that NEVER filled up...mostly because people didn't know about it I expect. If you want, I can give you the info on it's location BUT the good thing is in Salem everything is so close together that it was literally a 5 minute walk from the garage and you were at the intersection of Essex street where everything happens. ALSO that parking garage's rates never went above 5 dollars...even ON Halloween. The only caveat is that they close early on Halloween(I think by 8p.m.) so if you don't get your car out by 8 you're gonna be stuck until 1 a.m. or so. BUT the festivities are shut down at 10 p.m. anyway with the fireworks show...so you're only cutting it out early by 2 hours.

We also chose to stay at the Mariott in nearby Peabody which is a 15 minute drive...they were very reasonable and the only place that had anything open. (rooms book a year in advance in a lot of places)

The locals were VERY nice, the witch shops are fun to peruse and pick up some odds and ends, the cemeteries were my favorite part, though. And everything is condensed into downtown Salem so once you park you can walk everywhere. You do get local conservative groups that preach some very ignorant hate speech in the days leading up to Halloween. (One guy was going on about how God hates Dracula, which I thought was kind of funny.)

I will say the Hawthorne Hotel party was...not so great. There were beautiful costumes and it was fun but...WAY too many tickets were sold and it was very crowded and the DJ's weren't hitting on much. The Salem Witches host a costume ball at the Hawthorne too...not sure about that one but the tickets for that are very pricey.

Overall, it was something that I believe EVERY true Halloween fan needs to experience at least once but we definitely missed OUR party and OUR people so we're excited to get back to it this year! Feel free to message me about any questions whatsoever.

Crowd Event Public event Sky Pedestrian
 
#13 ·
We took 2015 off and we visited Salem on Halloween. ...

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Salem does sound amazing. I is just a more involved trip in that we would have to fly or do a LOOOOONG drive to get there. I think we are leaning towards New Orleans for this year. Hopefully can do Salem in the future soon!
 
#12 ·
"Crowds!" I shudder at the thought! (And so does my cat!) I have "Talked" to crowds of unruly people in the front of my house on a busy October night, and i know what I will say. The entire crowd listens. A drunk and his drunken girlfriend swear at my Mother (Who is running a food stand and has nothing to do with who or when anybody gets into the haunted house.
A sober fan suggests to the crowd that someone should urinate into his rented stretch limo's Open Moon Roof. So they leave! Good By!
I had only came out onto the drawbridge to tell everyone that it takes "Time" to put on a good show. We are trying to give everyone that show, we want to give you all the same show, which will also require "Time".=Thank You!
The rest of the year we see small groups here and we all have a lot of fun, no time constraints, usually.
 
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